Changes

I do [[claim ]] that what is sold to us today as [[freedom ]] is something from which this more radical [[dimension ]] of freedom and [[democracy ]] has been removed — in [[other ]] [[words]], the [[belief ]] that basic decisions [[about ]] [[social ]] [[development ]] are discussed or brought about involving as many as possible, a majority. In this [[sense]], we do not have an actual [[experience ]] of freedom today. Our freedoms are increasingly reduced to the freedom to choose your lifestyle. You can even choose your ethnic [[identity ]] up to a point.But this new [[world ]] of freedom described by [[people ]] like Ulrich Beck, who say everything is a matter of reflective negotiation, of [[choice]], can include new unfreedom. My favourite example is this, and here we have [[ideology ]] at its purest: we [[know ]] that it is very difficult today in more and more professional domains to get a long-term job. Academics or journalists, for example, now often live on a two- or [[three]]-year contract, that you then have to renegotiate. Of course, most of us experience this as something traumatising, shocking, where you can never be sure. But then, along comes the [[postmodern ]] ideologist: 'Oh, but this is just a new freedom, you can reinvent yourself every two years!'The problem for me is how unfreedom is hidden, concealed in precisely what is presented to us as new freedoms. I [[think ]] that the explosion of these new freedoms, which fall under the [[domain ]] of what Michel [[Foucault ]] called 'care of the [[self]]', involves greater social unfreedom.Twenty or 30 years ago there was still [[discussion ]] as to whether the [[future ]] would be fascist, socialist, [[communist ]] or [[capitalist]]. Today, nobody even discusses this. These fundamental social choices are simply no longer perceived as a matter to decide. A certain domain of radical social questions has simply been depoliticised.I find it very sad that, precisely in an era in which tremendous changes are taking [[place ]] and, indeed entire social coordinates are transformed, we don't experience this as something about which we decided freely.